No. Helene stood up, her throat dry. The taste of the absinthe made her feel slightly sick. She just wanted to be in her bed, and she hoped that Martha and Leontine would be fast asleep in the room they all shared.
Spring flew past and nothing woke or came to life. Helene’s nineteenth birthday was in June, on the longest day. Still not twenty-one, but old enough, as Fanny and Martha thought, to go to the White Mouse club with them for the first time. Fanny gave Helene a narrow envelope containing a voucher, made out in her wonderfully sloping handwriting, for a girls’ course in grammar-school education, at classes held in Marburger Strasse. The course was to begin in September and would fit in perfectly with Helene’s work at the pharmacy, since all the classes were in the evening. For some inexplicable reason Fanny had headed the voucher On Probation, underlining this all-embracing title, and it seemed to Helene as if, by that, she meant to point to those invisible pitfalls that her kind gesture must not gloss over.
Helene thanked her, but Fanny just looked at her sternly and began talking to Martha about the first beauty contest on German soil, to take place next year. Fanny thought that Martha definitely ought to enter.
I’m just bones and a bundle of nerves, said Martha, exhausted.
Oh, come on, replied Fanny, people see you better from outside. Look at yourself. Fanny put her long hand on the nape of Martha’s neck. Helene had to look away.
On a whim, and to annoy the Baron, Leontine cut Helene’s hair short that afternoon, level with her earlobes, and shaved away the rim of hair left in the nape of her neck with a knife. How light her head felt now!
In honour of the day, said Leontine, and got Helene to kiss her by way of thanks. To think that Helene would ever be so close to her own earlobes! Could she, Leontine, kiss those earlobes? Helene merely touched Leontine’s cheeks briefly with hers, her kisses flew into the air above Leontine’s shoulders, two, three, four, only Helene’s nose touched her friend’s ears. How did Leontine manage to smell as she once had in Lusatia, even today?
During the hair-cutting operation, the Baron kept passing the open doorway of the bathroom, putting his head round the door on a variety of threadbare pretexts and uttering wails of dismay. He couldn’t bear to watch, he cried, one hand going to his flies, barely in time to cover himself. It was a sin and a shame!
Martha gave Helene a knee-length dress of satin and chiffon that she had worn herself last season. It had originally been Fanny’s. Helene would be tall enough to wear it now, that was true. But Helene wasn’t as thin as Fanny and Martha. Without hesitating, Leontine said she would let out the dress at the seams and asked for a needle. In less than half an hour the dress fitted Helene perfectly. Out of the corner of her eye, Helene saw the Baron bending down to pick up her hair from the floor. He laid the long golden tresses over his arm and left the bathroom almost unnoticed, taking them with him. Fanny announced that she felt both too old and too young for satin. But the dress was just the thing for Helene, Fanny added, and she didn’t look again once Helene had the dress on. Presumably the grammar-school course and the dress must seem to her a good way of getting rid of Helene.
A summer night, the air was warm, a breeze was rising. Was Helene a little uneasy about her new hairstyle? She put on the hat that had come to Bautzen from Breslau along with their great-uncle’s legacy, the cloche hat like those all the women wore now, except that hers was made of velvet and set with small paste gemstones.
Fanny went ahead with Lucinde and the Baron; Leontine and Martha took Helene between them and linked arms with her. The scent of lime blossom wafted in their faces. Helene was wearing a transparent organza scarf instead of a jacket. The wind was pleasantly cool on her throat.
Two white-faced people stood at the entrance of the White Mouse; their make-up didn’t tell you for sure whether they were men or women. These doorkeepers unsmilingly negotiated the admission of guests. Those they knew were welcomed, strangers were turned away. Fanny was recognized and had a confidential word with one of the two doorkeepers, no doubt saying that the Baron, Lucinde and the young ladies were in her party. The doorkeeper was happy with that and opened the door for them with a gesture of invitation. The bar was not particularly large; guests stood crowded close together. Further forward, near a stage, there were tables with guests sitting at them. The days were gone when the famous Anita Berber performed her Dance of Vice and Horror here, a spectacle that was also called a Dance of Death; it was said that she now danced in a real theatre but didn’t appear often. However, all the guests could still imagine her on this stage. Their eyes kept going to the red curtains as if they thought she might appear at any moment and perform. Everyone had read how her lover stole from her in Vienna and abandoned her, thereafter travelling to America, where he was reported to have married four women within a single year. The latest rumour was that he had died soon after returning to Hamburg.
So there was no Anita Berber, but instead three musicians soon gathered on the stage, a trombonist, a clarinettist and a trumpeter. And while Helene still thought that the long-drawn-out notes were just tuning up, some of the guests began dancing. Helene was pushed on through the crowd, Fanny handed in her cape at the cloakroom and, without asking, removed Helene’s hat. Lucinde ordered champagne and glasses. They whispered, wasn’t that Margo Lion, standing over there among a cluster of people? The Baron’s eyes were turned only on Helene; they clung to her, to her face, her shoulders, her hands. His glances made her feel both safe and uncomfortable. The bare nape of her neck was probably a challenge to him, and not unwelcome, as Helene said to herself, but very exciting. Suddenly she felt breath on her shoulder and the Baron said, in his soft voice that almost squeaked when he tried to make it sound firm: Helene, you’re losing your scarf. Helene looked down at herself, at a loss, and then at the Baron, who seemed to her even smaller than usual tonight. Once again his lips approached; he was almost kissing her throat. I can see the little dimples in your shoulders, they’re sending me crazy.
Helene couldn’t help laughing. Someone pushed her gently in the back.
You’d better put that scarf round your shoulders again or other men will discover you.
She supposed the Baron was trying to claim rights to her bare shoulders. Helene turned. Fanny and Lucinde stood behind her; they had met Bernard and a friend of his. Fanny told her friends and her nieces to take a glass each from the tray. It was lucky that this club was so noisy. Helene didn’t want to answer the Baron; she draped the scarf casually over her elbows. Batting her false eyelashes was exciting too, and she had no objection at all if other men saw her little dimples.
Leontine greeted a young man and introduced him to her: his name was Carl Wertheimer. The music was so loud now that Leontine had to shout, and the young man put his hands over his ears. He was one of her pathology students, Leontine shouted, he’d smuggled himself into her course, he was really studying philosophy and languages — Latin, Greek — and modern literature too, he was obviously going to be a poet. Carl Wertheimer shook his head vigorously. Never. Oh yes, said Leontine, laughing, she’d once seen him standing in a group of students reciting a poem, she was sure he’d written it himself. Carl Wertheimer seemed bewildered by all this. He was a perfectly ordinary student, he said, and if he did quote Ovid or Aristotle, that wasn’t to be compared with the efforts of the rising generation of writers to emulate them. Anyway, he added, he wouldn’t have the courage to confess to such attempts of his own in the presence of these clever ladies. Leontine ran her hand over his hair in a sisterly way, she made him seem like a small child. Helene looked searchingly at him; his eyes were level with hers, his slender physique was that of a boy. He was probably about Helene’s own age. She looked at him for a moment like someone who might be hers, but all his attention was given to Leontine. It was obvious that Carl Wertheimer looked up to her and not just because she appeared to be several centimetres taller than he was. Leontine was an unusual woman and no doubt he valued her as a teacher; perhaps he was a little in love with her.